VANISHING TWINS
Throughout her career, Lindsay Seers has expressed a problematic relation to photography in terms of what it does through its imperial gaze onto the body of the other, in particular towards women. This prompted her to rethink the relationship between the subject and the object in photography; a process she developed by, for instance, turning herself into a camera, by pursuing a more performative approaches into the event of picture-taking, as well as by addressing how colonisation of peoples’ minds happens by means of scientific and technological exploitation.
For Fotogalleriet’s exhibition, Seers centres on a randomly appearing trait, the medical condition “heterochromia iridum” (a difference in eye colouration), where she brings together a range of people with diverse backgrounds from around the world, to ask what would a better understanding of these histories mean for the ways in which we define ourselves and how we would relate to each other if we were looking beyond scientific tropes? How does individual experience relate to that of the many? And who decides which voice is loudest and what should we hear?
People with two differently coloured eyes have been drawn together by Modern science to create categories no different from those applied through race, gender and sexuality. Meeting individuals from around the world, Seers creates a counter-community whose narration demounts dominant and hegemonic tropes in an emancipatory act to rebalance power relations otherwise negated.
Lindsay Seers holds a long-standing relationship with Norway by having returned to these lands, whose jurisdiction as a nation-state reaches the Arctic, at several points in time during her career. While reviewing the 2011 international biennale LIAF, in the Lofoten archipelago for Aftenposten, art critic Kjetil Røed described Seers’ piece as “By far the best work of the exhibition.” Seers lives on the Isle of Sheppy and works in London. She has exhibited at some of the most prestigious international venues for the presentation of contemporary art practices including Tate, London; MONA, Tasmania; Hayward Gallery, London; SMK (National Gallery of Denmark), Copenhagen; the Venice Biennale 2015; Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm; KIASMA, Helsinki; Turner Contemporary; Tate Triennial; Gallery TPW, Toronto; the Sami Centre for Contemporary Art, Kárášjohka, among many others. Grants and awards include the Sharjah Art Foundation Production Award; Le Jeu de Paume production award for the Toulouse Festival; the Paul Hamlyn Award; and the Derek Jarman Award. Her work is held in private and public collections, and Tate recently acquired one of her large scale installations titled Extramission 6. Click here to a short video produced by Tate about Lindsay Seers and her work.
In 2017 Fotogalleriet and PRAKSIS invited artist Lindsay Seers to lead the four-week residency programme titled A Global State Of Pareidolia, during which she worked alongside fellow Norwegian and international practioners (more information about the residency is available at www.praksisoslo.org). While in Oslo, Seers engaged in cross-disciplinary dialogue with local scientists, researchers and others, and filmed part of the work which will be on view at Fotogalleriet. This Oslo presentation brings together other research the artist carried out over the past decade.
Started in a basement in 1977 by renowned artists Dag Alveng and Tom Sandberg, together with Bjørn Høyum, as the first institution of its kind for hothousing cutting edge photographic practices in Scandinavia, Fotogalleriet has since then been dedicated to exhibiting local and international lens-based art practices, and analysing the rapidly expanding nature of a field unrestricted by technological and aesthetic shifts. Through its commitment to research and engagement with artists, Fotogalleriet is a leading institution within the field of image making.
Established in 2015, PRAKSIS is an Oslo based not-for-profit organisation fostering creative practice and knowledge production through collective activity and the exchange of ideas, skills and information. PRAKSIS seeks to establish dialogue between artists, thinkers and organisations locally and internationally, at all career stages, and across diverse cultures and disciplines.
